FERRIS IS A BIG WHEEL

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

The Republican state convention in Dewey Beach this
weekend was all about Ferris W. Wharton, the
ex-prosecutor whom the party wants to believe is a
political super-hero able to stop its slide with the
voters and strangle a Biden dynasty in the cradle.

It is a tall order to ask of anyone, let alone
someone who has been a politician for one month and two
days.

Since Wharton said "yes" in late March to the party's
ardent recruiting efforts to land a champion for
attorney general, the Delaware Republicans have made him
out to be the caped crusader to right their wrongs.

"This is a big one, guys, this is a big one," said
William Swain Lee, the ex-judge who ran for governor and
now chairs the Sussex County Republicans.

The Republicans want Wharton to pick up a statewide
office for them for the first time in 12 years and to do
it against Democrat Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III, the
senator's son who happens to come with a famous name, a
Democratic edge in voter registration and the timing to
be a candidate when a Republican president is skidding
in the polls and gasoline is $3 a gallon.

All this from someone who was asked not too long ago
by Bill Lee whom he knew in the party and blurted,
"You."

The convention was Wharton's coming-out ball after a
26-year career insulated from politics as a state and
federal prosecutor. From beginning to end, it was
Ferris, Ferris, Ferris.

The session opened Friday evening with Wharton as the
featured speaker, and it concluded Saturday with Wharton
receiving the party's endorsement by acclamation.

He was the guest of honor at a party hosted by state
Sen. Charles L. Copeland, a du Pont family member who
ironically might see what dynasty can do for him if he
runs for governor in two years.

Wharton was the toast of speeches by Bill Lee, who
was the judge when Wharton co-prosecuted the celebrated
murder case against Thomas J. Capano, and by W. Laird
Stabler Jr., the party's revered elder statesman who was
once attorney general himself.

He was saluted with the crime-fighting soundtrack of
"Hawaii Five-O" and the puckish refrain of "Bad boys,
bad boys, whatcha gonna do?"

The Republicans were so smitten with Wharton that
their activities on Friday came and went without so much
as a mention of Jan C. Ting, who was eclipsed as the
prize catch when Wharton came along.

Ting, a law professor, was the only statewide
candidate who actually had to accomplish something at
the convention. His task was to trounce Michael D.
Protack, who keeps running for high office despite the
pariah treatment he gets from the party, and win the
endorsement for the nomination against U.S. Sen. Thomas
R. Carper, the Democratic ex-governor seeking a second
term.

Ting did. He was endorsed by the convention 268-53,
polling 83 percent of the delegates' votes to sweep past
the required threshold of 60 percent. Not that it had
any effect on Protack. He promptly said he would proceed
against Ting in the primary on Sept. 12.

The fixation on Wharton even had the party unworried
about the hole in its statewide ticket where there is
supposed to be a candidate against state Treasurer Jack
A. Markell, the two-term Democrat.

"We will have someone," said Terry A. Strine, the
Republican state chair who preferred to focus on what
the party does have in U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle,
state Auditor R. Thomas Wagner Jr., Wharton and Ting.
"This is a ticket vastly more competent and accomplished
and winnable than anything we would have predicted four
months ago."

The convention was simply a giant commercial for
Wharton -- literally. Somehow in the life of his short
candidacy, there was enough money available for a camera
crew to be taping him for political spots and for the
convention hall at Ruddertowne to be flooded with
"Wharton for attorney general" signs. They were blood
red, a color for a prosecutor if ever there was one.

The message was unrelenting. Wharton is all about
prosecuting. Beau Biden is all about politics.

"It is wrong to expect the system to be manipulated
so that you can make a pit stop at the Attorney
General's Office on your way to fulfilling your
political and genetic legacy," Wharton said in his
speech Friday evening.

"My campaign will win not only because of my
principles and convictions, but because of another kind
of convictions, the number of convicted criminals I've
put behind bars versus that of my opponent. . . .

"By all accounts he is a nice young man who has
served our country in the National Guard and the United
States Attorney's Office in Philadelphia. He truly
deserves our thanks for that service. And I mean that.
But he does not deserve to be attorney general. And I
mean that, too."

The words were red meat to the Republicans, but
Wharton is used to addressing juries, not political
conventions, and his delivery turned what was supposed
to be raw into more of a mild stir fry.

By Saturday, though, when Wharton accepted his
endorsement, he was looser, joking he had so much fun
giving his speech the evening before that he was going
to give it again -- he did not -- and egging the
delegates on to another round of "Beau doesn't know!"

Amid all the adulation Stan Nichols, a convention-goer
from Rehoboth Beach, sidled up to Wharton like an
ancient soothsayer whose role was to whisper to the
Roman emperor so the ruler would not get too full of
himself, "Sic transit gloria mundi." Roughly
translated, it means that glory is fleeting.

Nichols said, "Last night when I listened, the
message was great, but I wasn't impressed with the
messenger. I changed my mind. Last night you were
reading, and today you were talking."